"He was becoming a bundle of contradictions: a person who loved to travel but always missed home; a masterful manager of people and events who planned memorable parties or trips but was then content to sit back and watch; a curious and engaging young man who was always eager to meet new people but longed for his “true” friends."
The exact contradictions that are engulfing my mind and soul at this point in time.

For every step that you march in defense of others, you should dance in celebration of this beautiful life
- Sophia Bush

heroics

When you make your living writing beautiful works of art or words that fight to extinguish genocide in our world, you're a hero.

When you speak to others about why feminism, or advocacy, and storytelling is important to our society as a whole, you're a hero.

Adichie, Power. Important names. When they speak, I listen.

Chimamanda Adichie continues to be a deeply influential and inspirational figure in my life

Highlights: 
"A man who would be intimidated by me is not a man I would be interested in."

"The problem with gender is it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are."

"Culture does not make people; people make culture."

"A feminist is a man or a woman who says 'Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it and we must do better."

 “The victims of injustice in our world do not need our spasms of passion; they need our long obedience in the same direction – our legs and lungs of endurance; and we need steady stores of joy.”

- Gary Haugen

“Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.”

Shantaram

"Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood what he'd meant. He'd been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as a constant as a the circuit of the stars. But I suddenly realised that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or single act of love ... For this is what we do. Put one food forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on."